Phillip Johnson's
recent book, Darwin on Trial, claims to show that the reasoning
presented in favor of evolutionary biology is defective. Such a book, being
one of so many, would excite little attention were it not for the fact that
the author is an expert in legal reasoning, and has contributed his particular
skills to the debate. However, the canons of scientific argument are quite
different from those of the courtroom, and it can be shown that Johnson's
critique of Darwinian thought falls far short of the mark in that it does not
fully appreciate the special requirements of scientific argumentation.

Introduction

Phillip E. Johnson's
recent book, Darwin on Trial1
has attracted a fair amount of attention among conservative Christians. Yet it
may create an inaccurate impression of the status of evolutionary biologyˇan
impression that I hope to correct in this article. On the book's dust jacket it
is said that Johnson, a professor of law at the University of California at
Berkeley, took up the study of Darwinism because he judged the books defending
it to be dogmatic and unconvincing. I, at least, find Johnson's own arguments
dogmatic and unconvincing. The main reason is that he does not adequately
understand scientific reasoning.

Many readers will be
impressed, even overawed, by Professor Johnson's credentials. He is not a
scientist but a lawyer, who claims that his law career, with "a specialty
in analyzing the logic of arguments and identifying the assumptions that lie
behind those arguments" well qualifies him for the task (p. 13). The fact
that he is a professor at U.C. Berkeley certainly adds to his credibility in the
eyes of many. But I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness (cf. 2
Cor. 11:1). Is he from Berkeley? So am I. One of my doctorates was earned
in the philosophy department at U.C. Berkeley, where I specialized in philosophy
of science. Is he an expert in critical reasoning? So am I. I teach critical
reasoning to seminary students (now at Fuller Theological Seminary) and have
just completed a textbook on the subject. Most of my other research and writing
deals with methodological issues in theology, science, and the relations between
the two.2

My plan is to describe
some of the basic moves in scientific reasoning, and then examine in detail an
important (and typical) passage in Johnson's book, explaining why it appears
fallacious to one trained in scientific reasoning. Next, I shall describe some
recent refinements in philosophers' understanding of scientific reasoning, and
use them to describe the sort of study that would be required to make a fair
assessment of the scientific standing of evolutionary biology.

Another issue that
needs to be addressed is the very nature of science, and how it relates to
religion. A bit of history will help us understand some of the positions taken
by evolutionary biologists and excuse them from some of Johnson's criticisms.

I shall end with a few
remarks on what I take to be the proper attitude for Christians toward
evolutionary biology.

Before I proceed to the
attack, however, I must say that Johnson's book has many good features. Johnson
describes some of the failures and problems faced by evolutionary biology, and
provides a valuable critique of popular writings that turn the science of
evolutionary biology into an atheistic metaphysical system with many of the
trappings of religion.

Basic
Scientific Reasoning

Francis Bacon's
description of scientific reasoning has been influential for many years. In
brief, he claimed that scientists must first rid their minds of all prejudice
and preconceptions, then collect all the facts relevant to the issue at hand,
and finally draw inductive inferences from the facts.3
This view of scientific reasoning is inadequate, however, since it only accounts
for our knowledge of observed regularities. An important advance in the
philosophy of science of this century was the recognition of what has been
called "hypothetico-deductive" reasoning.4 This kind of
reasoning frees science from dependence on direct observation, and accounts for
all of our theoretical knowledge. It is called "hypothetical" because
it relies on the formation of hypotheses to explain a given set of data or
observations. It is called "deductive" because hypotheses must be
tested by drawing conclusions from them and seeing if they are corroborated by
further observation or experiment. So the test of a hypothesis is not by direct
observation (most scientific hypotheses postulate unobservable entities or
processes), but by asking what observable consequences follow from the
hypothesis, and by testing these instead. Another way of putting the matter: a
hypothesis is accepted on the basis of its ability to explain observations and
results of experiments.

Consider the following
analogy drawn from everyday experience. You come home from work and find the
front door ajar and muddy tracks leading into the kitchen. You form a
hypothesis: the kids were here. But of course, there could be other
explanations, such as a prowler. To test the hypothesis, you make predictions
based on your knowledge of the children's behavior. For example, you check to
see if anyone has been into the cookies, or if their school clothes are on the
floor upstairs. If your predictions are confirmed you do not need to see the
children to know that your original hypothesis was correct.

So the form of
hypothetico-deductive reasoning is as follows:

´We observe O1.

´We formulate a
hypothesis (H), which, if true, would explain O1.

´Then we ask, if H
is true, what additional observations (O2.... On) ought
we be able to make?

´ Finally, if O2
through On are observed, H is confirmed.

It is important to note
that O2 through On are not equivalent to H; they are
observable consequences that we deduce from H with the aid of additional
assumptionsˇnibbled cookies and strewn clothing are not children.

Because the
hypothesized entities or processes are unobservable, scientists often make use
of modelsˇobservable entities or processes that are similar in
important respects to the theoretical entities. A famous example is the
billiard-ball model used to understand and account for the behavior of gasses in
a closed container. Models are often helpful in deriving testable predictions
from hypotheses (theories).

It is also important to
note that hypothetical reasoning (like all reasoning about matters of fact) can
never amount to proof. The best that can be hoped for is a high degree of
confirmation. Much of what philosophy of science is about is examination of the
conditions under which a scientific theory can be said to be well-confirmed. So
objecting that any scientific theory is "not proved" is emptyˇnone
can be.

The foregoing provides
enough terminology to analyze some of Johnson's arguments, so we turn now to
these.

Johnson
on Natural Selection

Chapter Two of Darwin
on Trial is an examination of the thesis that natural selection, or survival
of the fittest, (when combined with natural variation) provides an adequate
account of macroevolutionˇthat is, the evolution of all known species of
living things from one or a few primitive ancestors. A crucial step in Johnson's
overall criticism of evolutionary biology is his assessment of evidence for the
efficacy of natural selection, so we must examine this short passage (pp. 17-20)
with care. Johnson begins by noting that Darwin could not point to examples of
natural selection in action, and so he had to rely heavily on an argument by
analogy with artificial selection by breeders of domestic plants and animals.

However, Johnson
replies to Darwin's argument as follows:

Artificial selection
is not basically the same sort of thing as natural selection, but rather is
something fundamentally different. Human breeders produce variations among
sheep or pigeons for purposes absent in nature, including sheer delight in
seeing how much variation can be achieved. If the breeders were interested
only in having animals capable of surviving in the wild, the extremes of
variation would not exist... .

What artificial
selection actually shows is that there are definite limits to the amount of
variation that even the most highly skilled breeders can achieve. Breeding of
domestic animals has produced no new species, in the commonly accepted sense
of new breeding communities that are infertile when crossed with the parent
group.. .

In other words, the
reason dogs don't become as big as elephants, much less change into elephants,
is not that we just haven't been breeding them long enough. Dogs do not have
the genetic capacity for that degree of change, and they stop getting bigger
when the genetic limit is reached (p. 18).

Next, Johnson turns to
evidence cited by contemporary evolutionists:

Darwinists disagree
with that judgment, and they have some points to make. They point with pride
to experiments with laboratory fruitflies. These have not produced anything
but fruitflies, but they have produced changes in a multitude of
characteristics. Plant hybrids have been developed which can breed with each
other, but not with the parent species, and which therefore meet the accepted
standard for new species. With respect to animals, Darwinists attribute the
inability to produce new species to a lack of sufficient time.. . In some
cases, convincing circumstantial evidence exists of evolution that has
produced new species in nature. Familiar examples include the hundreds of
fruitfly species in Hawaii and the famous variations among "Darwin's
Finches" on the Galapagos Islands... .

Lack of time would be
a reasonable excuse if there were no other known factor limiting the change
that can be produced by selection, but in fact selective change is limited by
the inherent variability in the gene pool. After a number of generations the
capacity for variation runs out. It might conceivably be renewed by mutation,
but whether (and how often) this happens is not known (p. 19).

And now Johnson's
conclusion, drawn from the above considerations:

Whether selection has
ever accomplished speciation (i.e., the production of a new species) is not
the point. A biological species is simply a group capable of interbreeding.
Success in dividing a fruitfly population into two or more separate
populations that cannot interbreed would not constitute evidence that a
similar process could in time produce a fruitfly from a bacterium. If breeders
one day did succeed in producing a group of dogs that can reproduce with each
other but not with other dogs, they would still have made only the tiniest
step towards proving Darwinism's important claims.

That the
analogy to artificial selection is defective does not necessarily mean that
Darwin's theory is wrong, but it does mean that we will have to look for more
direct evidence to see if natural selection really does have a creative effect
(pp. 19-20).

Analysis

What are we to make of
this set of arguments? Before I begin a serious analysis, permit me another bit
of foolishness: The series of steps in Johnson's argument recalls an old
lawyer's joke about a defendant in a murder trial: "Your honor, I didn't
kill him, and besides, it was an accident, and on top of that he really had it
coming!" Similarly: artificial selection is not analogous to natural
selection, and besides, selective breeders have not produced any new species,
and on top of that they have only produced new plant species, but no new animal
species.

We
must ask what observations or results
are required to confirm (not prove) the scientific hypothesis
that natural selection is capable of producing
radically different new species

More seriously, we must
ask what observations or results are required to confirm (not prove) the
scientific hypothesis that natural selection is capable of producing radically
different new species.5 Since we cannot directly
observe natural selection at work, we need an observable model. Selective
breeding has been proposed. (We will come back to the issue of the suitability
of this model below.) What is at stake in testing the power of natural
selection, then, is that our analogue to natural selection be shown to
accomplish two things: First, we need to see that selection can produce radical
differences within a population. Second, we need to see that selection can
result in speciationˇthe development of one species out of another. The
criterion here is incapacity to breed with the parent species.

Johnson seems to
believe that both of these effects need to be observed in the same instance. He
would have a point if there were something about one effect that precluded the
other or made it less likely; for example, from the fact that you can pat your
head and can also rub your stomach, I cannot infer with much confidence that you
can do both at once. However, this does not appear to be such a case. The
splitting of a population into two species isolates the gene pools, allowing
them to diverge, and ultimately to manifest different physical characteristics.
We can also imagine that a wide enough physical variation within a species would
tend to isolate two or more gene pools and provide a necessary though not
sufficient condition for speciation. Johnson notes, for example, that while dogs
are all theoretically capable of interbreeding, size differences make it
practically impossible.

Now, Johnson admits
that we have examples of both of these changes as a result of intentional
selective breeding. Regarding the first, he would like to see dogs as big as
elephants, but the difference between a toy poodle and a great dane seems
adequate to me. Regarding the second, there are instances from plant breeding
and, he says, circumstantial evidence that many species of fruitflies have
developed from one or a few species originally introduced to Hawaii. Yet his
conclusion is that none of this is adequate evidence for the Darwinian thesis.
In effect, he is claiming that because plant speciation and intra-species
variation are not equivalent to macroevolution they provide no evidence
for the power of natural selection. But recall that we never hoped to observe
a case of macroevolution by means of natural selection. We were about the more
modest task (and the only realistic task) of providing confirmatory evidence by
means of a modelˇan analogous processˇthat macro-evolution by means of
natural selection is possible (given sufficient time and enough environmental
pressure).

The form of the
Darwinian reasoning is as follows:

´ O1 is
observed (here, the patterns of speciation in existence today).

´ A hypothesis (H) is
formulated which, if true, would explain O1 (here, the correlative
hypotheses of variation, natural selection, and geographical isolation).

´ If H is true,
what additional observations (O2... On) ought we be able
to make? (here, O1: radical change within a population, and O2:
speciation).

´ Finally, O2
and O3 have been observed, so H is confirmed.

Again, O2
and O3 are not equivalent to H; they are observable consequences that
can be deduced from H with the aid of additional assumptions.

In
effect, Johnson is claiming that because plant speciation
and intra-species variation are not equivalent to macroevolution
they provide no evidence for the power of natural selection.

One of the crucial
assumptions here is that selective breeding is like natural selection in
relevant respects. It is like natural selection in that it operates by
means of differential reproduction rates and within the variation that nature
supplies. These seem to me to be the relevant factors. Johnson's claim that the
characteristics breeders look for are different from the ones for which
"Nature" selects seems to me beside the point. The issue is whether
selective breeding can produce radical changes, including speciation; not the
particular nature of those changes.

I believe it could be
shown by examining other arguments that Johnson consistently fails to
distinguish between evidence confirmatory of a hypothesis and a set of
observations that together are equivalent to the hypothesis. For example, on pp.
25-7 he first lists six pieces of evidence that have been offered in support of
the power of natural selection, then concludes without explanation that
"none of these `proofs' provides any persuasive reason for believing
that natural selection can produce new species... (p. 27, emphasis mine). In
Chapter 8, discussing theories about the origin of life, he concludes that
because the synthesis of some of the components of living organisms does not
actually amount to the production of life in the laboratory there is "no
reason to believe that life has a tendency to emerge when the right
chemicals are sloshing about in a soup" (p. 103, emphasis mine).

Recent
Philosophy of Science

I shall introduce in
this section some of the refinements contributed by recent philosophers of
science by commenting on further aspects of Johnson's arguments.

In the section quoted
above, Johnson has said that there are definite limits to the amount of
variation that even the most highly skilled breeders can achieve; that dogs do
not get as big as elephants because they do not have the genetic capacity for
that degree of change (p. 18); and that after a number of generations the
capacity for variation runs out (p. 19). He then admits that mutation
might renew the capacity for change, but claims that whether and how often this
happens is not known (p. 19).

When Darwin proposed
his theory of evolution, he speculated that there must be a mechanism that works
predominantly to maintain the characteristics of a population from one
generation to another, but that also allowed for some degree of fluctuation and
for genuine novelty. At that time, of course, he did not know what that
mechanism was. A great triumph for evolutionary theory, but one Johnson does not
mention, came from the discovery of the role of genes in reproduction. The gene
pool provides for variation within overall stability in most instances, but
mutations allow for genuine novelty.

Johnson mentions
mutation as though it is scarcely important at all, but in fact it is an
essential "auxiliary hypothesis" for the evolutionary program, and it
is simply not possible to draw Johnson's strong conclusions about the limits of
variation without considering the frequency and kinds of mutations, and their
potential contribution to viable changes in a population.6

Johnson
mentions mutation as though
it is scarcely important at all, but in fact it is an essential "auxiliary
hypothesis"
for the evolutionary program.

This fact illustrates
an important point stressed by philosophers of science. Theories (hypotheses)
rarely or never face the test of experience standing alone. We are (almost)
always faced with the testing of whole networks of theories and auxiliary
hypotheses. This makes the falsification of a major theory very difficultˇwhen
negative evidence comes along, it can often be reconciled with the central
theory by adding or changing lower-level (auxiliary) theories. If positive
evidence is lacking, its absence can often be explained by the same strategy.

Johnson's book is full
of examples of changes of this sort to make evolutionary theory consistent with
the evidence (or the absence of evidence). For example, Darwin expected that the
fossil record would soon provide evidence of species intermediate between known
species and their ancestors (the "missing links"). When few such
intermediates were found, later theorists proposed auxiliary hypotheses to
explain their absence: for example, the fossil record is still only a small
sample of all of the creatures that have existed, and it is to be expected that
the intermediate species, being in between well-adapted forms, would not last
long and would therefore leave little evidence behind in the form of fossils.

Theorizing of this sort
is extremely common in science. Since major theories come along only rarely,
most of scientific advance consists in the careful elaboration and qualification
of major theories, fine-tuning them to fit the evidence. Several philosophers of
science have noted, though, that there is a kind of fine-tuning that represents
genuine improvement and growth in scientific knowledge, and another kind that is
a mere face-saving deviceˇlinguistic tricks to protect a theory from
falsification. So the important question is how to tell the difference.

Imre Lakatos (d. 1974)
made a major contribution to philosophy of science by providing a criterion for
distinguishing "progressive" from "degenerative" or "ad
hoc" refinements of a network of theories.7
The essence of his criterion is this: if a hypothesis that is added to the
network not only explains the problems for which it was designed, but also leads
to the prediction and corroboration of new facts of a different sort, then the
modification is progressive. On the other hand, if it only takes care of the
problem and is not independently confirmed by the successful prediction of novel
facts, then it is a degenerative move. Lakatos made a double claim about this
criterion. First, he claimed that it could account for the history of science
better than other views,8 in that history would show
that scientists generally abandon research programs that are making mostly
degenerative moves in favor of a more progressive rival. His second claim is
that scientists should accept progressive programs and abandon
degenerative onesˇthat this is what scientific rationality consists in.

Application
to Darwinism

Now, what consequences
does this criterion of "progressiveness" have for evaluating
evolutionary theory? It shows, first of all, that the only fair way to assess
the program is by examining the auxiliary hypotheses that have been added to it
to see whether each is a progressive or degenerative modification.

It is clear that
Johnson is aware of the problem of ad hoc developments of a theory, as
the following passage indicates:

Darwinists have
evolved an array of subsidiary concepts capable of furnishing a plausible
explanation for just about any conceivable eventuality. For example, the
living fossils, which have remained basically unchanged for millions of years
while their cousins were supposedly evolving into more advanced creatures like
human beings, are no embarrassment to Darwinists. They failed to evolve
because the necessary mutations didn't arrive, or because of
"developmental constraints," or because they were already adequately
adapted to their environment. In short, they didn't evolve because they didn't
evolve.

Some animals give
warning signals at the approach of predators, apparently reducing their own
safety for the benefit of others in the herd. How does natural selection
encourage the evolution of a trait for self-sacrifice? Some Darwinists
attribute the apparent anomaly to "group selection." Human nations
benefit if they contain individuals willing to die in battle for their
country, and likewise animal groups containing self-sacrificing individuals
may have an advantage over groups composed exclusively of selfish individuals.

Other Darwinists are
scornful of group selection and prefer to explain altruism on the basis of
"kinship selection." By sacrificing itself to preserve its offspring
or near relations an individual promotes the survival of its genes. Selection
may thus operate at the genetic level to encourage the perpetuation of genetic
combinations that produce individuals capable of altruistic behavior. By
moving the focus of selection either up (to the group level) or down (to the
genetic level), Darwinists can easily account for traits that seem to
contradict the selection hypothesis at the level of individual organisms.

Potentially the most
powerful explanatory tool in the entire Darwinist armory is pleiotropy,
the fact that a single gene has multiple effects. This means that any mutation
which affects one functional characteristic is likely to change other features
as well, and whether or not it is advantageous depends upon the net effect.
Characteristics which on their face appear to be maladaptive may therefore be
presumed to be linked genetically to more favorable characteristics, and
natural selection can be credited with preserving the package.

I am not implying
that there is anything inherently unreasonable in invoking pleiotropy, or
kinship selection, or developmental constraints to explain why apparent
anomalies are not necessarily inconsistent with Darwinism. If we assume that
Darwinism is basically true than it is perfectly reasonable to adjust the
theory as necessary to make it conform to the observed facts. The problem is
that the adjusting devices are so flexible that in combination they make it
difficult to conceive of a way to test the claims of Darwinism empirically
(pp. 29-30).

This
passage indicates that Johnson
sees no difference between auxiliary hypotheses that are testable
and those that are not.

However, this passage
also indicates that Johnson sees no difference between auxiliary hypotheses
that are testable and those that are not. It is difficult to conceive a test
for the hypothesis that the living fossils failed to evolve because they were
already adapted to their environmentˇor to be more precise, it is hard to
conceive of a way of showing this claim false. This seems to be an
instance of a "linguistic trick" to protect the theory from
falsification. But not so with all of the examples Johnson has cited here. For
example, kinship selection is testable: if it is true, then there should be a
direct relationship between the percentage of genes shared with another
individual and the degree of "altruism" exhibited toward that
individualˇa prediction that has in fact been confirmed. In addition,
genetic mapping makes the concept of pleiotropy empirically testable.

It
must be emphasized, though, that the mere existence of problems
does not disqualify a theoryˇgood theories are always in process,
and the question is whether they are progressing, overall, or degenerating.

So it is clear that
Johnson has failed to see the import of such cases. He does not understand their
role in demonstrating that there are in fact ways "to test the claims of
Darwinism empirically" (p. 30).

In general Johnson has
given too little attention to the role genetic theory has played in the history
of evolutionary biology. Genetics arose as a major new theory in complete
independence of evolutionary biology. Initially there was strong antagonism
between workers in the two fields. However, with the advent of population
genetics under Fisher, Wright and Haldane, the two fields were reconciled. In
Lakatos's terms, the entire genetic program came to function as an
"auxiliary hypothesis" within the evolutionary program, providing a
tremendous amount of fresh empirical evidenceˇevidence of exactly the sort
that Lakatos has led us to expect from a progressive program. Another instance
is "neutral allele" theory, with its associated phenomenon of
molecular clocks.

Much remains to be done
to provide an adequate assessment of the evolutionary program. There are a
number of problems with the theory, but whether there are more than with other
major theories, such as Big-Bang cosmology, remains to be seen. It must be
emphasized, though, that the mere existence of problems does not disqualify a
theoryˇgood theories are always in process, and the question is whether they
are progressing, overall, or degenerating. So the important question is how
the evolutionary program deals with its problems; whether the auxiliary
hypotheses needed to account for anomaliesˇfor the absence of certain kinds of
expected confirmatory evidenceˇcan be independently tested and confirmed.
Johnson does not pursue this question; nor can I do so here. Adequate treatment
would require another book. But this is where the battle must be joined if we
are to have a fair assessment of the evolutionary program.

It has been noted9
that the kind of "novel facts" needed to provide independent
confirmation of auxiliary hypotheses are usually rare, and get harder rather
than easier to find as a program progresses. This suggests that the crucial
evidence for evolutionary theory, if it can be produced, will not be massive. It
will consist in a few confirmed predictions here and there. In this way,
evolutionary biology will be entirely in line with many well-respected programs
such as Big-Bang cosmology.

A major problem for
anyone undertaking an assessment of the evolutionary program is that philosophy
of science provides criteria for relative rather than absolute assessment. That
is, the criteria we have been discussing are only capable of telling us which of
two or more competing programs is the most acceptable. While there is
competition within the evolutionary program, between punctuated equilibrium and
gradualist theories of change, for instance, there is no major scientific
competitor for the program as a whole. This being the case, there are limits to
what critics of Darwinism can hope to accomplish. When a theory is the only one
available, the burden of proof falls on those who wish to do away with it. It is
simply a fact of the history of science that a theory is seldomˇperhaps neverˇabandoned
when there is no competitor to take its place. If criteria for rational choice
are necessarily comparative, then this is a rational way to proceed. Beyond
that, there is the practical question: what would evolutionary biologists do
if there is no other conception of the field to guide their research?

The
Nature of Science

In this section I shall
take up three issues raised by Johnson:

1. Evolutionary biology
is not scientific because (according to Karl Popper) science is characterized by
falsifiability, and the central ideas of Darwinism are held dogmatically.

2. Evolutionary theory
is held dogmatically because it is the only account of life that fits with a
naturalistic philosophy.

3. Evolutionary
biologists ought to consider the possibility that life is the product of
creative intelligence.

Science
and Falsifiability

In his final chapter
Johnson adopts Karl Popper's criterion for distinguishing science from
pseudoscience. Popper argued that what made science scientific was not its
subject matter but the willingness of its proponents to allow their theories to
be falsified.10 In Johnson's words: "Progress
is made not by searching the world for confirming examples, which can always be
found, but by searching out the falsifying evidence that reveals the need for a
new and better explanation" (p. 147).

Imre Lakatos was a
colleague of Popper's at the London School of Economics. Lakatos treated
Popper's claims about the nature of science as an empirical theory and argued
that, as such, the history of science falsified Popper's account. His own
theory, introduced above, was proposed as a "new and better
explanation" of the course of the history of science. We have already seen
his proposed criterion for distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable
(progressive and degenerating) research programs. Here it is relevant to
introduce another feature of his account of science.

All scientific research
programs, he concluded, include a central idea, called the hard core, which is
usually too vague to be tested directly. In addition, there are the auxiliary
hypotheses that mediate between the core theory and empirical data. Lakatos's
study of the history of science convinced him that a certain amount of dogmatism
with respect to the core of a program was both a regular feature of good science
and a necessary strategy to allow for the development of scientific thought. His
new version of falsificationism allows researchers to protect their core theory
"dogmatically" so long as the program is progressive overall.11

From what has just been
reported,12 it follows that Johnson's criticism in
the following quotation shows not the unscientific character of
evolutionary biology, but rather that Johnson approaches it with an inadequate
understanding of the philosophy of science:

The central Darwinist
concept that later came to be called the "fact of evolution"ˇdescent
with modificationˇwas thus from the start protected from empirical testing.
Darwin did leave some important questions open, including the relative
importance of natural selection as a mechanism of change. The resulting
arguments about the process, which continue to this day, distracted attention
from the fact that the all-important central concept had become a dogma (p.
149).

That is, the usual
strategy in science is to hold on to a central ideaˇhold it
"dogmatically," if you willˇso long as the theoretical elaborations
and additions that are necessary to reconcile it with the evidence lead to new
discoveries rather than to blind alleys.

Evolution
and Naturalism

Johnson explains the
evolutionists' dogmatism by attributing it, not to the usual processes of
scientific development, but to an atheistic philosophical naturalism. Johnson is
quite right about this in some cases, and perhaps in most of the cases of popular
books written in defense of evolution.

However, a subtle
distinction needs to be made here. On the one hand there are the proponents of
"a religion of scientific naturalism, with its own ethical agenda and plan
for salvation through social and genetic engineering" (Johnson, p. 150).
This religion is fair game for criticism by proponents of other religions, and
ought not be allowed establishment in the curriculum of the public
schools. On the other hand, there is what we might call methodological
atheism, which is by definition common to all natural science. This is
simply the principle that scientific explanations are to be in terms of natural
(not supernatural) entities and processes.

Johnson is critical of
biologists and philosophers who define science in this way. However, it is a
fact of history (perhaps an accident of history) that this is how the
institution of natural science is understood in our era. It is ironic,
perhaps, that Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle, two of the scientists who led the
move to exclude all natural theology from science (then called "natural
philosophy") did so for theological reasons. Their Calvinist
doctrine of God's transcendence led them to make a radical distinction between
God the Creator and the operation of the created universe, and hence to seek to
protect theology from contamination by science. The metaphysical
mixing of science and religion, Boyle and Newton believed, corrupted true
religion.13

So, for better or for
worse, we have inherited a view of science as methodologically atheisticˇmeaning
that science qua science, seeks naturalistic explanations for all natural
processes. Christians and atheists alike must pursue scientific questions in our
era without invoking a creator. The conflict between Christianity and
evolutionary thought only arises when scientists conclude that if the only scientific
explanation that can be given is a chance happening, then there is no other
explanation at all. Such a conclusion constitutes an invalid inference from a
statement expressing the limits of scientific knowledge to a metaphysical (or
a-religious or anti-religious) claim about the ultimate nature of reality.

This is a subtle
differenceˇone beyond the grasp of a fourth-grade science class (and perhaps
beyond the grasp of some outspoken scientific naturalists as well?). For this
reason I am sympathetic with Christians who object to the teaching of evolution
in the public schools. But the answer is to help educators make the distinction,
not to cooperate in blurring it as Johnson has done.14

Creative
Intelligence as a Scientific Hypothesis

Johnson writes:

Why not consider the
possibility that life is what it so evidently seems to be, the product of
creative intelligence? Science would not come to an end, because the task
would remain of deciphering the languages in which genetic information is
communicated, and in general finding out how the whole system works.
What scientists would lose is not an inspiring research program, but the
illusion of total mastery of nature. They would have to face the possibility
that beyond the natural world there is a further reality which transcends
science (p. 110).

The answer to Johnson's
question is that anyone who attributes the characteristics of living things to
creative intelligence has by definition stepped into the arena of either
metaphysics or theology. Some might reply that the definition of science, then,
needs to be changed. And perhaps it would be better if science had not taken
this particular turn in its history. Could the nature of science change again in
the near future to admit theistic explanations of natural events? There are a
number of reasons for thinking this unlikely. A practical reason is the fact
that much of the funding for scientific research in this country comes from the
federal government. The mixing of science and religion would raise issues of the
separation of church and state.

A second reason for
thinking such a change unlikely is that many Christians in science, philosophy,
and theology are still haunted by the idea of a "God of the gaps."
Newton postulated divine intervention to adjust the orbits of the planets. When
Laplace provided better calculations, God was no longer needed. Many Christians
are wary of invoking divine action in any way in science, especially in biology,
fearing that science will advance, providing the naturalistic explanations that
will make God appear once again to have been an unnecessary hypothesis.

Concluding
Remarks

What, then, of the
relation between Christianity and Darwinism? I hope I have made it clear that
this question is ambiguous. One question is: How ought Christianity be related
to evolutionary biologyˇthe pure science? The other is: How ought Christianity
be related to evolutionary metaphysics? The latter system of thought involves
the use of scientific theory to legitimate a metaphysical-religious point of
view, and it has been so successful that many cannot imagine Christian thought
making its own, different use of biology. Nonetheless it can be done, and it has
been done by the likes of biochemist-theologian Arthur Peacocke.15

Peacocke notes that the
sciences can be organized in a hierarchy, with higher sciences studying more
complex levels of organization in reality. For example, chemistry studies more
complex organizations of matter than does physics; biochemistry more so than
inorganic chemistry; within biology alone there is a hierarchy as we move from
biochemistry to the study of cells, to tissues, organs, and finally to the
functioning of entire organisms within their environments.

Each science has its
recognized domain, and concepts and theories appropriate to its own level of
interest. Yet each science is conditioned by the levels above and below. Lower
levels set limits on the behavior of entities at higher levelsˇfor example,
chemical processes in nerves and muscles set limits on how high or fast an
animal can jump. However, lower levels do not uniquely determine the behavior of
entitles at higher levelsˇhere one also has to take account of the
environment. Thus, the animal's particular movements within the range permitted
by chemistry and physics will be to some extent conditioned by ecological
factors as well.

So any science alone
provides an incomplete account of reality; it finds limits above and below,
beyond which its explanatory concepts cannot reach. But what about the limits of
the highest (or lowest) science in the hierarchy? Peacocke proposes that at the
top of the hierarchy of the sciences we reach theology, the science that studies
the most complex system of allˇthe interaction of God and the whole of
creation.16

Peacocke's suggestion
provides the groundwork for an exciting account of the relations between the
sciences and theology. We can examine the kinds of relations that hold between
two hierarchically ordered sciences, and then look for analogous relations
between theology and one or more sciences. One relation we may expect to find is
that when a science reaches an inherent limit, there may be a role for theology
to play at that point. For example, it may be inherently impossible for
science to describe what happened "before" the Big Bang.

Peacocke's
understanding of the relation between science and theology means that we need
not turn biology into theology, but we may and must bear in mind that there is a
discipline "above" biology that answers questions that biology alone
cannot answer. Is this discipline to be an atheistic metaphysic that elevates
"Chance" to the role of ultimate explanation, or is it to be a
theology of benevolent Design? The question calls for a careful comparison of
the explanatory force of these two competing accounts of reality. The former has
to explain (or explain away) all appearances of order and purpose; the latter
has to explain a number of features of the world that (as biologists correctly
point out) appear inconsistent with intelligent design.17

It looks to many as
though these two explanatory systems are at a stand-off. For every feature that
appears to be the product of design, there is another that appears to be the
product of chance. However, I suspect that the design hypothesis, as the core of
the theological research program, could be shown to be more progressive (in
Lakatos's sense) than a research program based on chance. My guess is that while
the atheistic program could explain (or explain away) all the evidence for
design, it will have to do so by means of an assortment of ad hoc
hypotheses. Besides this, the Christian program has at its disposal additional
supporting evidence from a variety of domains: religious experience, history,
the human sciences.

So there are two issues
before us, both of which cry out for much more extensive and careful treatment
than I have given them here: First, what is the true standing of evolutionary
biology as a science and measured against the best criteria that have so
far been proposed for evaluating scientific acceptability (truth). I make two
claims with regard to Johnson's book: first, that he has allowed the
Evolutionary Naturalists to confuse evolutionary science with something else
and, second, that he has used too primitive a view of scientific methodology for
his evaluation. I do not claim to have definitively refuted his claims against
evolutionary science, but I hope to have undermined them, and to have shown the
direction a definitive evaluation of evolutionary biology would have to take.

The second big issue is
the clash of world views: evolutionary naturalism versus Christianity; Chance
with a capital "C" versus Design. Settling this controversy is well
beyond the capability of any single scholar on either side, but we do educators,
school children, and perhaps even evolutionary biologists a great favor by
carefully distinguishing this issue from the first.

An important effect of
separating the theological-metaphysical issue from the scientific one may be to
lessen the anxiety and heat of controversy that surrounds the latter. We want
scientists to stop their attacks on Christianity, but all Bible-readers should
know that the cessation of hostilities is not to be left to our opponents.
Better to turn away wrath with a gentle word.18

2This
sort of credential swapping is quite out of place in academic writing, but
nonetheless it deserves a name. In practical reasoning, some arguments are
called ad hominem (to or against the man); this argument I shall dub an ab
femina argument (from the woman).

3This
view of science has been particularly influential in conservative American
Christian circles. John Witherspoon promoted Bacon's views among the Princeton
theologians, such as Charles Hodge, who have influenced American Fundamentalism.
It is described and criticized at somewhat greater length by Johnson, pp.
146-47.

4 This
term was coined by Carl Hempel. See his Philosophy of Natural Science
(Prentice-Hall, 1966).

5Actually,
we are asking more of natural selection here than is required by the theory.
Darwinian theory does not require that natural selection be directly responsible
for reproductive isolation. The classical theory is that geographical isolation,
followed by differential adaptation to different conditions, is the principal
agent of speciation.

6 Johnson
does take up this issue in the following chapter. My point is that the
conclusions he draws in this chapter regarding the limits of variation are quite
unwarranted because they cannot be made independently of the assessment
of the possibilities for mutations.

7See
"Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes,"
in J. Worrall and G. Currie, eds., The Methodology of Scientific Research
Programmes: Philosophical Papers, Volume 1 (Cambridge University Press,
1978), pp. 8-101.

8 Such
as Karl Popper's falsificationism.

9By
Alan Musgrave, in "Logical vs. Historical Theories of Confirmation," British
Journal for the Philosophy of Science 25 (1974): 1-23.

10Popper first elaborated this thesis in Logik der Forschung (Vienna,
1935); English translation, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Harper,
1965).

11There is insufficient space here to show that Lakatos's understanding of
science is superior to Popper's. See my Theology in the Age of Scientific
Reasoning (Cornell University Press, 1990), chapter 3; as well as Lakatos's
"Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes,"
op. cit.; and especially his "History of Science and Its Rational
Reconstructions," also in The Methodology os Scientific Research
Programmes, op. cit., pp. 102-138.

12The same point is made by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions (University of Chicago, 1970); Paul Feyerabend in Against
Method (New Left Books, 1975); and Larry Laudan in Progress and its
Problems (University of California Press, 1977).

14For an excellent discussion of this and other issues, see Howard Van Till,
Robert Snow, John Stek, and Davis Young, eds., Portraits of Creation
(Eerdmans, 1990).

15See Creation and the World of Science (Clarendon, 1979); Intimations
of Reality (University of Notre Dame Press, 1985); or Theology for a
Scientific Age (Basil Blackwell, 1990).

16 I
elaborate and apply this view of the hierarchy of the sciences and their
relation to theology in "Evidence of Design in the Fine-Tuning of the
Universe," in Robert Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Chris Isham, eds., Quantum
Cosmology and the Laws of Nature: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action
(The Vatican Observatory, forthcoming).

17Peacocke's view is that God creates through exploration of the
possibilities provided by chance as well as through law-governed design.

18I
wish to thank Philip Spieth at the University of California, Berkeley for
helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.